The brief segment — a teaser of a longer 20/20 story that will air tonight — was balanced. It wasn’t a one-sided puff piece, the kind of gay victimhood celebration the mainstream media were doing back in May when this story first went national.

Our jug-eared hero Detective Jeremy Shepherd was interviewed, as was Jim Smith, the father of the underage victim in the case. But I was uneasy as the segment closed with George Stephanopoulos on the Good Morning America set with ABC’s legal expert, Dan Abrams, who said sex with a 14-year-old is a crime “as a technical legal matter.”

One quick takeaway: Kaitlyn’s mother Kelley Hunt Smith has “crazy eyes.” If you see the 20/20 segment tonight, watch her closely during the interview segments and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

It is in this context that we must view the decision by ABC News to feature the Kaitlyn Hunt story in a “balanced” way. What is the value of reporting about a sex offender and giving “both sides of the story,” if not to inspire debate about the legitimacy of age-of-consent laws?

Because that’s what this is really about: Florida establishes the age of consent at 16. Kaitlyn Hunt was 18; the vicitim in the case was 14; and the law categorizes sex with a 14-year-old as a felony.

This was an open-and-shut case and Kaitlyn Hunt should have taken the first plea bargain the prosecutors offered. It only became a national news story because the Hunt family figured they could get gay-rights activists to support them, and get sympathetic coverage from the liberal media — and they were right. Both the state’s largest gay rights group, Equality Florida, and the state chapter of the ACLU came out in support of the “Free Kate” crusade, as did Chris Hayes of MSNBC and other left-wing advocacy journalists who, evidently, view sex with kids as the next frontier of their “liberation” campaign.

Comments

113 Responses to “When ‘Balanced’ Journalism Is Bad”

Dana October 5th, 2013 @ 7:35 pm

Really? I don’t excuse her offense, but you’re not going to get much support for that position. Had she been a 34 year old creeper, year, you would have, but, crime or no, this was still a high school romance.

That’s what the “Romeo and Juliet” laws are all about, but Miss Hunt’s victim fell outside of those.

What we’ve ended up with is really the best answer: Miss Hunt does some time to pay for her crime, but still has a life ahead of her, and the age-of-consent statutes not only remain in place, but the whole sordid affair sends a message to high schoolers: you, too, can foul up.

*Bzzzt* you lose. I have never stated any of the above nor declared homosexuals my enemies. Homosexuals and their promoters and enablers are all seriously sick individuals, both mentally and spiritually. As such I find them bothersome, their activities at the least sinful and often illegal and degrading. I detest their sin but I do not detest the person. I detest their acts but not the person, I detest their mental disease but not the person suffering from the disease.
I do not wish them dead only healed. I do not wish them imprisoned unless convicted of a crime. I am not a Nazi. The promoters of the GLBTQ ‘lifestyle’ to children, the activists that close all discussion regarding that lifestyle and who attack any person or organization that stands in their way are the Nazi’s.
Project much buttercup?

The Gay Rights Platform included the abolition of all age of consent and anti sodomy laws (spelled – give us your little boys). Of course the connection between homosexuals and little boys goes back thousands of years, (aka Sparta and Greece).

They deny it to our faces for the moment, but in their literature, in their words and deeds, they have always had a sick fixation on children.

We are just now slowly becoming aware of the dark side of lesbianism. The World Net Daily did an expose on girl gangs and their tendency to sexually attack young females to ‘turn them out’ (forcefully convert them to lesbianism). Among themselves, they used names like DTO for Dykes Taking Over. Jo Farah’s WND and Fox news showed that GLAAD was fighting to suppress news reports of the rapes taking place.

The face the homosexual movement wants to offer is just giggling, harmless lispers and rainbows. Hide the violence, child abuse and diseases.

Perfect reply! It’s grotesque to see that liberals, while not being into denying the holocaust itself, are equally fanatic and blind – they live to deny the existence of Nazi homosexuals (and countless other LGBTs that supported the Nazis)

If a 34 yr old had the same attitude as Hunt did, then there’s no reason for you to say they are a creeper. There are 18 yr old and 34 and 64 yr old creepers, meaning people can be creepers of any age -including in adolescence. Hunt is a 18 yr old piece of crap.
If you think having sex with 14 yr olds is “romance,” then you’re aligning yourself much too close to Polanski and NAMBLA.

Mjolnir Hammerschlag October 7th, 2013 @ 5:15 pm

None of us have to demonize homosexuals.

They do that all by themselves by what they do and what they say.

What they do? Take a look at the photo galleries of the FOLSOM STREET FAIR and UP YOUR ALLEY.

Take a look at the toll in human destruction in the faces of the children they’ve assaulted (e.g. Catholic Church and BSA molestation scandals, Sandusky, etc…).